German civil and human rights activist appealed the International Criminal Court for Greece

Sarah Luzia Hassel-Reusing

This is the fourth appeal and was sent to The Hague by the German civil and human rights activist and constitutional plaintiff Sarah Luzia Hassel-Reusing, who is known up to the UN, and has personally, last week at the 21.11.2012,  filed a paper of 30 pages with a comprehensive appendix with evidence at the International Criminal Court (ICC). She refers to the already existing charge of the Greeks Georgios Tragkas, Antonios Prekas, Panagiotis Tzenos, and Dimitrios Konstantaras, who have filed their charge against Christine Lagarde (CEO of the International Monetary Fund, IMF), Jose Manuel Barroso (President of the EU Commission), Herman van Rompuy (President of the European Council), Dr. Angela Merkel (German Chancellor), and Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble (German Minister of Finance) for suspected crime against humanity (art. 7 Roman Statute). The Greek charge, so Hassel-Reusing, comprehensively explains the damage at the Greek health system and the interpretation of the Roman Statute.

The German charge leaves open, who are the perpetrators, but shows, where to find them. It focuses on the damages to the health of the Greeks, caused by the cuts into the health system and by the starvation (art. 7 par. 1 lit. k Roman Statute). For this purpose, the German charge examines the conditions of the Troika, which lead to the humanitarian catastrophe up to the withholding of vital medicaments. In view of conditions like the reduction of the employers’ contributions to the social insurance by 5 %, like austerity measures mainly at the health insurance and at the pension insu-rance, and like the blocked account for alle state revenues, which has hit hospitals as a shock, and that in times of lower revenues of the of the public health insurance because of unemployment, and because of the reduction of the wages and of the pensions by the Troika, the humanitarian catastrophe especially in the health sector has been predictable and so must have been deliberately accepted.

The  ill people carry the main burden via moderating fees. In addition to that, the patients already have, because of the liquidity problems of the public health insurance, to advance most of the costs of medicaments, and often also for medical disposable material.. A further aggravation is to be prognosticated because of the budget surplus of 4,5 % (related to national level, provinces, municipalities, and social insurance), which the Troika has demanded.

Furthermore, the German charge shows, by means of statistics and media reports, that already in 2009, before the conditionalities of the Troika, the Greek minimum wage has been below the absolute poverty line, so that already then many Greek have had too little, to be able to pay for food and for accomodation, not to speak of the costs of clothing and transport, which are also included in the absolute poverty line. By the conditions of the Troika like interventions into the law on wage agreements, the loosening of the protection against wrongful dismissal, the reduction of the pensions, and high moderating fees in the health sector, as well as by the de facto payments by the patients themselves because of the liquidity problems of the public health insurance,  the number of Greeks, who are not able any more to pay rent and food, has significantly risen.In addition to that, the number of suicidies has risen by 45 % because of unemployment and of the fear of poverty. Just remember the pharmacist, who has shot himself at the place of the constitution.

A crime against humanity means, that someone intendingly attacks a civilian population and knows about this attack, and does this either with a large scope or systematically (art. 7 Roman Statute). In this regard, the German charge focuses on attacks against health (art. 7 par. 1 lit. k Roman Statute), here as a result of excessive interventions into the universal human rights to food (art. 11 UN Social Pact) and to health (art. 12 UN Social Pact).

It proves the large scope and the system especially regarding the  „little treaty change“ (art. 136 par. 3 TFEU). This would oblige to always new mechanisms for the „financial stability“ of the financial sector, especially of the big banks. The talk about the  „euro safeguarding“ or „stability of the euro currency zone as a whole“, provenly, only serves the deception of policy and public. The already known mechanisms, which are going to be based on art. 136 par. 3 TFEU, are those of the European financing mechanism („Greece Support“, EFSM, EFSF, and ESM) and those for the establishing of the EU economic government (tightened Stability and Growth Pact, Imbalance Procedure, and Budgetary Surveillance). By means of  all these mechanisms, the securing  of the financial sector is going to be financed by means of systematical conditions at the cost of all states of the eurozone with a strictness as in the „practice“ of the IMF. The charge proves by many documents, what this strictness means, at the example of the results of IMF conditions in many countries. The conditions  of the IMF and of the World Bank are, according to Prof. Dr. Jean Ziegler, former UN special rapporteur for the human right to food, main cause no. 2 for the starvation in the world. According to the economist and former IMF employee Davison Budhoo, the IMF alone has on its conscience, because of its conditions, the lives of millions of children. The same excessive strictness is now, for the first time completely provable by EU documents, systematically planned by means of art. 136 par. 3 TFEU for the whole eurozone, and the Greeks are, in the view of the Hassel-Reusing, being used as experimental subjects for that, and regarding Greece already today a strictness according to the „practice“ of the IMF is being applied.

For this purpose, the same unscrupulous powers, which are here abusing the European Union for the securing and the enrichment of the big banks and as a rammer against the universal law, even risk, seemingly open-eyed, the self-disintegration of the EU. For, according to art. 53 Vienna Treaty Law Convention, international treaties, which are incompatible with „ius cogens“, are void und so invalid. To the „ius cogens“ belong, inter alia, the UN Charter, the universal human rights, and the Roman Statute (incl. the prohibition of the crime against humanity in art. 7 Roman Statute).

Art. 136 par. 3 TFEU is incompatible with the universal human rights and presumably incompatible with the Roman Statute. With the enactment of this paragraph, the whole TFEU and  so also the crucial legal basis for the very existence of the European Union would become invalid.

The charge recommends for the investigations to find out the perpetrators, NOT to limit the focus to the five persons mentioned in the Greek charge, but also to look closely at the counselling sphere. Among this sphere, especially the influence of persons from the surroundings of Goldman Sachs, Bilderberg, and Deutsche Bank is very conspicuous. It is crucial to respect the presumption of innocence, and to investigate, who has the concrete responsibility for the excessiveness of the conditions against food and health at Greece respectively for the systematical expansion of the excessive strictness by means of art. 136 par. 3 TFEU in the meaning of a strictness as in the „practice“ of the IMF. In view of the humanitarian catastrophe at Greece, the soon start of  formal  criminal proceedings by the ICC is urgently necessary. [Comment: You can help in this direction by signing the petition to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) --> Sign the petition ]

 

Read entire article here: 

 

http://justiceforgreece.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/german-civil-and-human-rights-activist-appealed-the-international-criminal-court-for-greece/

The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Ellen Brown

The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers. 

In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress.  But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair.  Paulson’s plea for apermanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.

By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailoutfor European banks without asking anyone’s permission.  And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press.  The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers  on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.

The bankers’ coup has triumphed in Europe seemingly without a fight.  The ESM is cheered by Eurozone governments, their creditors, and “the market” alike, because it means investors will keep buying sovereign debt.  All is sacrificed to the demands of the creditors, because where else can the money be had to float the crippling debts of the Eurozone governments?

There is another alternative to debt slavery to the banks.  But first, a closer look at the nefarious underbelly of the ESM and Goldman’s silent takeover of the ECB . . . .

The Dark Side of the ESM

The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as Member States representing 90% of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012.  A December 2011 youtube video titled “The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!”, originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length.  It states:

The EU is planning a new treaty called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM:  a treaty of debt. . . . The authorized capital stock shall be 700 billion euros.  Question: why 700 billion?  [Probable answer: it simply mimicked the $700 billion the U.S. Congress bought into in 2008.] . . . .

[Article 9]: “. . . ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them . . . within seven days of receipt of such demand.”  . . . If the ESM needs money, we have seven days to pay. . . . But what does “irrevocably and unconditionally” mean?  What if we have a new parliament, one that does not want to transfer money to the ESM?  . . . .

[Article 10]: “The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorized capital and amend Article 8 . . . accordingly.”  Question:  . . . 700 billion is just the beginning?  The ESM can stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any time it wants to?  And we would then be required under Article 9 to irrevocably and unconditionally pay up?

[Article 27, lines 2-3]: “The ESM, its property, funding, and assets . . . shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process . . . .”  Question:  So the ESM program can sue us, but we can’t challenge it in court?

[Article 27, line 4]: “The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall . . . be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action.”  Question: . . . [T]his means that neither our governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM organization?  That’s a pretty powerful treaty!

[Article 30]:  “Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them . . . and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents.”   Question:  So anyone involved in the ESM is off the hook?  They can’t be held accountable for anything? . . . The treaty establishes a new intergovernmental organization to which we are required to transfer unlimited assets within seven days if it so requests, an organization that can sue us but is immune from all forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity.  There are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply?  Governments cannot take action against it?  Europe’s national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization?  Is that the future of Europe?  Is that the new EU – a Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?

The Goldman Squid Captures the ECB

Last November, without fanfare and barely noticed in the press, former Goldman exec Mario Draghi replaced Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the ECB.  Draghi wasted no time doing for the banks what the ECB has refused to do for its member governments—lavish money on them at very cheap rates.  French blogger Simon Thorpe reports:

On the 21st of December, the ECB “lent” 489 billion euros to European Banks at the extremely generous rate of just 1% over 3 years.  I say “lent”, but in reality, they just ran the printing presses. The ECB doesn’t have the money to lend. It’s Quantitative Easing again.

The money was gobbled up virtually instantaneously by a total of 523 banks. It’s complete madness. The ECB hopes that the banks will do something useful with it – like lending the money to the Greeks, who are currently paying 18% to the bond markets to get money. But there are absolutely no strings attached. If the banks decide to pay bonuses with the money, that’s fine. Or they might just shift all the money to tax havens.

At 18% interest, debt doubles in just four years.  It is this onerous interest burden, not the debt itself, that is crippling Greece and other debtor nations.  Thorpe proposes the obvious solution:

Why not lend the money to the Greek government directly? Or to the Portuguese government, currently having to borrow money at 11.9%? Or the Hungarian government, currently paying 8.53%. Or the Irish government, currently paying 8.51%? Or the Italian government, who are having to pay 7.06%?

The stock objection to that alternative is that Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty prevents the ECB from lending to governments.  But Thorpe reasons:

My understanding is that Article 123 is there to prevent elected governments from abusing Central Banks by ordering them to print money to finance excessive spending. That, we are told, is why the ECB has to be independent from governments. OK. But what we have now is a million times worse. The ECB is now completely in the hands of the banking sector. “We want half a billion of really cheap money!!” they say.  OK, no problem. Mario is here to fix that. And no need to consult anyone. By the time the ECB makes the announcement, the money has already disappeared.

At least if the ECB was working under the supervision of elected governments, we would have some influence when we elect those governments. But the bunch that now has their grubby hands on the instruments of power are now totally out of control.

Goldman Sachs and the financial technocrats have taken over the European ship.  Democracy has gone out the window, all in the name of keeping the central bank independent from the “abuses” of government.  Yet the government is the people—or it should be.  A democratically elected government represents the people.  Europeans are being hoodwinked into relinquishing their cherished democracy to a rogue band of financial pirates, and the rest of the world is not far behind.

Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty.  Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments.  Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free.  This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada.

Today the issuance of money and credit has become the private right of vampire rentiers, who are using it to squeeze the lifeblood out of economies.  This right needs to be returned to sovereign governments.  Credit should be a public utility, dispensed and managed for the benefit of the people.

To add your signature to a letter to parliamentarians blocking ratification of the ESM, click here. 

_________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute,http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.  In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites arehttp://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

How Greece could take down Wall Street

 By Ellen Brown
21.02.2012

In an article titled "Still No End to 'Too Big to Fail,'" William Greider wrote in The Nation on February 15th:


Financial market cynics have assumed all along that Dodd-Frank did not end "too big to fail" but instead created a charmed circle of protected banks labeled "systemically important" that will not be allowed to fail, no matter how badly they behave.


That may be, but there is one bit of bad behavior that Uncle Sam himself does not have the funds to underwrite: the $32 trillion market in credit default swaps (CDS).  Thirty-two trillion dollars is more than twice the U.S. GDP and more than twice the national debt. 


CDS are a form of derivative taken out by investors as insurance against default.  According to the Comptroller of the Currency, nearly 95% of the banking industry's total exposure to derivatives contracts is held by the nation's five largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs.  The CDS market is unregulated, and there is no requirement that the "insurer" actually have the funds to pay up.  CDS are more like bets, and a massive loss at the casino could bring the house down.


It could, at least, unless the casino is rigged.  Whether a "credit event" is a "default" triggering a payout is determined by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), and it seems that the ISDA is owned by the world's largest banks and hedge funds.  That means the house determines whether the house has to pay. 


The Houses of Morgan, Goldman and the other Big Five are justifiably worried right now, because an "event of default" declared on European sovereign debt could jeopardize their $32 trillion derivatives scheme.  According to Rudy Avizius in an article on The Market Oracle (UK) on February 15th, that explains what happened at MF Global, and why the 50% Greek bond write-down was not declared an event of default. 


If you paid only 50% of your mortgage every month, these same banks would quickly declare you in default.  But the rules are quite different when the banks are the insurers underwriting the deal. 


MF Global: Canary in the Coal Mine?


MF Global was a major global financial derivatives broker until it met its unseemly demise on October 30, 2011, when it filed the eighth-largest U.S. bankruptcy after reporting a "material shortfall" of hundreds of millions of dollars in segregated customer funds.  The brokerage used a large number of complex and controversial repurchase agreements, or "repos," for funding and for leveraging profit.  Among its losing bets was something described as a wrong-way $6.3 billion trade the brokerage made on its own behalf on bonds of some of Europe's most indebted nations.


Avizius writes:


[A]n agreement was reached in Europe that investors would have to take a write-down of 50% on Greek Bond debt. Now MF Global was leveraged anywhere from 40 to 1, to 80 to 1 depending on whose figures you believe. Let's assume that MF Global was leveraged 40 to 1, this means that they could not even absorb a small 3% loss, so when the "haircut" of 50% was agreed to, MF Global was finished. It tried to stem its losses by criminally dipping into segregated client accounts, and we all know how that ended with clients losing their money. . . .


However, MF Global thought that they had risk-free speculation because they had bought these CDS from these big banks to protect themselves in case their bets on European Debt went bad. MF Global should have been protected by its CDS, but since the ISDA would not declare the Greek "credit event" to be a default, MF Global could not cover its losses, causing its collapse.


The house won because it was able to define what " winning" was.  But what happens when Greece or another country simply walks away and refuses to pay?  That is hardly a "haircut."  It is a decapitation.  The asset is in rigor mortis.  By no dictionary definition could it not qualify as a "default."


That sort of definitive Greek default is thought by some analysts to be quite likely, and to be coming soon.  Dr. Irwin Stelzer, a senior fellow and director of Hudson Institute's economic policy studies group, was quoted in Saturday's Yorkshire Post (UK) as saying:


It's only a matter of time before they go bankrupt. They are bankrupt now, it's only a question of how you recognise it and what you call it.


Certainly they will default . . . maybe as early as March. If I were them I'd get out [of the euro].


The Midas Touch Gone Bad


In an article in The Observer (UK) on February 11th  titled "The Mathematical Equation That Caused the Banks to Crash," Ian Stewart wrote of the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives:


The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold.  But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.


As Aristotle told this ancient Greek tale, Midas died of hunger as a result of his vain prayer for the golden touch.  Today, the Greek people are going hungry to protect a rigged $32 trillion Wall Street casino.  


Avizius writes:



The money made by selling these derivatives is directly responsible for the huge profits and bonuses we now see on Wall Street. The money masters have reaped obscene profits from this scheme, but now they live in fear that it will all unravel and the gravy train will end. What these banks have done is to leverage the system to such an extreme, that the entire house of cards is threatened by a small country of only 11 million people. Greece could bring the entire world economy down. If a default was declared, the resulting payouts would start a chain reaction that would cause widespread worldwide bank failures, making the Lehman collapse look small by comparison.


Some observers question whether a Greek default would be that bad.  According to a comment on Forbes on October 10, 2011:


[T]he gross notional value of Greek CDS contracts as of last week was €54.34 billion, according to the latest report from data repository Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). DTCC is able to undertake internal netting analysis due to having data on essentially all of the CDS market. And it reported that the net losses would be an order of magnitude lower, with the maximum amount of funds that would move from one bank to another in connection with the settlement of CDS claims in a default being just €2.68 billion, total.  If DTCC's analysis is correct, the CDS market for Greek debt would not much magnify the consequences of a Greek default-unless it stimulated contagion that affected other European countries. 


It is the "contagion," however, that seems to be the concern.  Players who have hedged their bets by betting both ways cannot collect on their winning bets; and that means they cannot afford to pay their losing bets, causing other players to also default on their bets.  The dominos go down in a cascade of cross-defaults that infects the whole banking industry and jeopardizes the global pyramid scheme.  The potential for this sort of nuclear reaction was what prompted billionaire investor Warren Buffett to call derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction."  It is also why the banking system cannot let a major derivatives player-such as Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers-go down.  What is in jeopardy is the derivatives scheme itself.  According to an article in The Wall Street Journal on January 20th:


Hanging in the balance is the reputation of CDS as an instrument for hedgers and speculators-a $32.4 trillion market as of June last year; the value that may be assigned to sovereign debt, and $2.9 trillion of sovereign CDS, if the protection isn't seen as reliable in eliciting payouts; as well as the impact a messy Greek default could have on the global banking system.


Players in the future may simply refuse to play.  When the house is so obviously rigged, the legitimacy of the whole CDS scheme is called into question.  As MF Global found out the hard way, there is no such thing as "risk-free speculation" protected with derivatives.   


__________________________________


Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.  In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back.  Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com

Financial Fascism? 'Greeks should revolt against debt slavery!'

Rule by troika

by Serge Halimi

Former bankers Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti have taken over in Athens and Rome, exploiting the threat of bankruptcy and the fear of chaos. They are not apolitical technicians but men of the right, members of the Trilateral Commission that blamed western societies for being too democratic.
In November, the Franco-German directorate of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — the “troika” — were furious when the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, announced plans to hold a referendum. This, they said, would call into question an agreement reached in October to strengthen the economic policy that had brought the country to its knees. Summoned to Cannes for an interview during a summit that his country was too small to attend, kept waiting, and publicly upbraided by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (who were responsible for exacerbating the crisis), Papandreou was forced to abandon the plan for a referendum and resign. His successor, a former vice-president of the ECB, promptly decided to include in the Athens government a far-right organisation banned since the Greek colonels lost power in 1974. (The troika expressed no views on this.)
The European project was supposed to secure prosperity, strengthen democracy in states formerly ruled by juntas (Greece, Spain, Portugal), and defuse “nationalism as a source of war”. But it is having the opposite effect, with drastic cuts, puppet governments at the call of the brokers, and renewed strife between nations. A young Spaniard voiced his anger at having to go to Berlin or Hamburg to find work: “We can’t go on being Germany’s slaves.” The Italians find the French president’s high and mighty attitude offensive and wonder, rightly, what exceptional talents might justify this. some Greeks are complaining about the “occupation” of Greece, with cartoons depicting the German chancellor in Nazi uniform.
For people in countries suffering under austerity measures, the history of Europe provides some outstanding examples. In some ways, recent events in Athens recall Czechoslovakia in 1968: the crushing of the Prague Spring and the removal of the Communist leader Alexander Dubcek. The troika has played the same part in reducing Greece to a protectorate as the Warsaw Pact did in Czechoslovakia, with Papandreou in the role of Dubcek, but a Dubcek who would never have dared to resist. The doctrine of limited sovereignty has been applied, though admittedly it is preferable and less immediately lethal to have its parameters set by rating agencies rather than by Russian tanks rolling over the borders.
Having crushed Greece and Italy, the EU and the IMF have now set their sights on Hungary and Spain.


source:
http://mondediplo.com/2011/12/01europe

Trader Alessio Rastani on the BBC: Goldman Sachs Rules The World Not Governments

Goldman Sachs rules Europe

Our friends from Goldman Sachs…

Mario Monti, Lucas Papademos and Mario Draghi have something in common: they have 

all worked for the American investment bank. This is not a coincidence, but evidence of 

a strategy to exert influence that has perhaps already reached its limits.

Marc Roche

Serious and competent, they weigh up the pros and cons and study 
all of the documents before giving an opinion. They have a fondness 
for economics, but these luminaries who enter into the temple only 
after a long and meticulous recruitment process prefer to remain 
discreet. Collectively they form an entity that is part pressure group, 
part fraternal association for the collection of information, and part 
mutual aid network. They are the craftsmen, masters and grandmasters 
whose mission is "to spread the truth acquired in the lodge to the rest of 
the world."


According to its detractors, the European network of influence woven 
by American bank Goldman Sachs (GS) functions like a freemasonry. 
To diverse degrees, the new European Central Bank President, Mario 
Draghi, the newly designated Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Monti, 
and the freshly appointed Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos 
are totemic figures in this carefully constructed web.


Heavyweight members figure large in the euro crisis Draghi was 
Goldman Sachs International’s vice-chairman for Europe between 2002 
and 2005, a position that put him in charge of the the “companies and 
sovereign” department, which shortly before his arrival, helped Greece 
to disguise the real nature of its books with a swap on its sovereign debt.


Monti was an international adviser to Goldman Sachs from 2005 until his 
nomination to lead the Italian government. According to the bank, his 
mission was to provide advice "on European business and major public 
policy initiatives worldwide". As such, he was a "door opener" with a brief 
to defend Goldman’s interest in the corridors of power in Europe.


The third man, Lucas Papademos, was the governor of the Greek central 
bank from 1994 to 2002. In this capacity, he played a role that has yet to 
be elucidated in the operation to mask debt on his country’s books, 
perpetrated with assistance from Goldman Sachs. And perhaps more 
importantly, the current chairman of Greece’s Public Debt Management 
Agency, Petros Christodoulos, also worked as a trader for the bank in London.


Two other heavyweight members of Goldman’s European network have also 
figured large in the euro crisis: Otmar Issing, a former member of the 
Bundesbank board of directors and a one-time chief economist of the European 
Central Bank, and Ireland’s Peter Sutherland, an administrator for Goldman 
Sachs International, who played a behind the scenes role in the Irish bailout.


Relay exclusive information to the bank’s trading rooms. How was this loyal 
network of intermediaries created? The US version of this magic circle is 
composed of former highly placed executives of the bank who effortlessly 
enter the highest level of the civil service. In Europe, on the other hand, 
Goldman Sachs has worked to accumulate a capital of relationships. But 
unlike its competitors, the bank has no interest in retired diplomats, highly 
placed national and international civil servants, or even former prime 
ministers and ministers of finance. Goldman’s priority has been to target 
central bankers and former European commissioners.


Its main goal is to legally collect information on initiatives in the near future 
and on the interest rates set by central banks. At the same time, Goldman 
likes its agents to remain discreet. That is why its loyal subjects prefer not to 
mention their filiation in interviews or in the course of official missions.
These well-connected former employees simply have to talk about this and 
that secure in the knowledge that their prestige will inevitably be rewarded 
with outspoken frankness on the part of those in powerful positions. 


Put simply they are there to see "which way the wind is blowing," and 
thereafter to relay exclusive information to the bank’s trading rooms.

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